Facade of 18 Wooster Street, card marking the opening of Deitch Projects’ second Soho location, 2000. Size: 8.75 x 8.75 Inches — Available
In the course of fourteen years in New York’s Soho arts’ district, Deitch Projects completely reconfigured people’s expectations about art. Its founder Jeffrey Deitch was already a well-known art advisor, curator and critic when in 1996 he decided to open his own gallery, where he remained committed to the populist and irreverent impulses of the 1970s and 80s. Visitors to Deitch Projects could always count on being both challenged and entertained.
A good example of Deitch’s approach to art was his first curatorial venture, Lives: Artist Who Deal With Peoples’ Lives (Including Their Own) As The Subject And/Or The Medium Of Their Work (1975). With an emphasis on real-world experiences, and his belief that living could be an art form in itself, the artists explored ethnic and gender issues, as well as, different ways of meshing art and real life. Working with diverse groups of artists each with their own concerns, Deitch Projects presented performance art, environments, multi-media, as well as traditional painting and sculpture.
Deitch Projects closed in 2010 when Jeffrey Deitch was appointed director of the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. But the history of the gallery lives on in the Deitch Projects Exhibition Archives 1996-2010. All of the text below comes from Deitch Projects press releases.
See more at Gallery 98’s Deitch Projects page.
Vanessa Beecroft, VB16 Piano Americano-Beige, Deitch Projects’ first exhibition at its first location, 76 Grand Street, January 1996
Vanessa Beecroft, VB16 Piano Americano-Beige, card, Deitch Projects, 1996.
Size: 4 x 6 Inches — Available
“When Jeffrey Deitch telephoned me in Milan on Christmas of 1995 to invite me to open his new gallery, the event was only two weeks away. I decided to realize a beige monochrome and let the nudity of the girls surface.”
Nari Ward, Happy Smilers, Deitch Projects, March 1996
Nari Ward, Happy Smilers, card and press release, Deitch Projects, 1996.
Size: 5.75 x 3.5 Inches — Available
“Happy Smilers reflected Nari Ward’s experiences as a child growing up in Jamaica and as an artist in Harlem…The entrance to the gallery was camouflaged as a duty-free store… In the main gallery, Ward constructed a contemplative space of urban detritus. The space was converted into a kind of ruined home-furnishings store.”
Mariko Mori, Made in Japan, Deitch Projects, April 1996
Mariko Mori, Made in Japan, card, Deitch Projects, 1996. Size: 6.25 x 8.5 Inches — Available
“Mori was fascinated by the way contemporary Japanese society balanced technology, make-believe, and humanity. With an affectionate perspective on her native country, she explored the way fantasy and reality overlapped in contemporary Japanese consciousness.”
Barry McGee, The Buddy System, Deitch Projects, March 1999
Barry McGee, The Buddy System, flyer/poster and 2-page press release, Deitch Projects, 1999. Size: 11 x 17 Inches — Available
“The Buddy System was a floor-to-ceiling painting, drawing, and sculptural installation by Barry McGee that filled the entire gallery. McGee draws on a range of influences, including Mexican murals, tramp art, graffiti art of the 1970s and ’80s, and the work of the San Francisco Beat poets, to create a unique visual language.”
Malick Sidibé, The Clubs of Bamako, Deitch Projects, February 1999
Malick Sidibé, The Clubs of Bamako, flyer/poster, Deitch Projects, 1999. Size: 11 x 17 Inches — Available
“The Clubs of Bamako featured photographs by Malick Sidibé and sculpture by Emile Guebehi and Nicolas Damas, documenting the nightlife in the clubs of Bamako, Mali, from the late 1950s through the mid-’70s…Sidibé’s exuberant images open our eyes to an Africa completely different from old stereotypes.”
Ghada Amer, Encyclopedia of Pleasure, Deitch Projects, November 2001
Ghada Amer, Encyclopedia of Pleasure, card, Deitch Projects, 2001. Size: 8.75 x 5.5 Inches — Available
“Gawami al Lada or Encyclopedia of Pleasure was written by Ali Ibn Nasr Al Katib around the late 11th/early12th century…it was written by a Muslim centuries ago, and is forbidden today…Why has speaking and reading about sexuality become so taboo in today’s Muslim society?”
Session The Bowl, an exhibition about skateboard culture, Deitch Projects, December 2002
Session The Bowl, with Martha Copper, Futura, Shepard Fairey, flyer/poster, Deitch Projects, 2002. Size: 11 x 14 Inches — Available
“The central element was Free Basin, an enormous empty wooden swimming-pool sculpture/skateboard bowl created by Simparch. An exhibition of new painting, drawing, photography, and video by thirty-three artists associated with skateboard culture was presented on the surrounding walls.”
Kehinde Wiley, Faux Real, Deitch Projects, May 2003
Kehinde Wiley, Faux Real, flyer/poster, Deitch Projects, 2003. Size: 17 x 11 Inches — Available
“Deitch Projects presented Faux Real, a painting installation by Kehinde Wiley, inspired by a Venetian scuola. The installation featured something rarely seen in contemporary art, a spectacular ceiling painting, along with four arched altarpieces… (Wiley’s) figurative paintings ‘quote historical sources and position young black men within that field of ‘power.’”
Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1981: The Studio of the Street, Deitch Projects, May 2006
Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1981: The Studio of the Street, Curated by Diego Cortez & Glenn O’Brien, card, Deitch Projects, 2006. Size: 8.75 x 6.75 Inches
“Curated by two close friends of the artist, Diego Cortez and Glenn O’Brien, 1981: The Studio of the Street focused on the most important transitional year in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s career. In the year 1981, Basquiat made the transition from working on the street to working in the studio.”
Keith Haring’s Houston Street and Bowery Mural (1982), Recreated by Deitch Projects with Goldman Properties, May 2008
Keith Haring’s Houston Street and Bowery Mural (1982), Recreated by Deitch Projects with Goldman Properties, flyer/poster, 2008. Size: 17.5 x 11.5 Inches — Available
“(Haring’s) mural was up for only a few months in the summer of 1982 before it was painted out but its image remains imprinted in the memory of many people who were part of the downtown artist community in the early 1980s.”
See more cards, posters, and other art ephemera at our Deitch Projects page.
